Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
So everyone is doing the “end-of-year” awards thing. I’ll pitch in my thoughts. Man of the Year? Well that’s Trump of course; the fact that he’s coming back to town with a naughty-nice list is the greatest comeback in American political history.
Boss Move of the Year? That goes to Trump as well for his reaction to the assassination attempt in Butler this past July.
Second place in the boss move category? I nominate Trump for his starring role in “Justin Trudeau’s Trip to Mar-a-Lago.”
It has long been my custom to post a Festive Season video, featuring vintage, or sometimes modern-retro, tinplate trains under the tree.
At You Tube, the video is first in a play list, in which three or four of the ones that follow show what’s going on with the basement project.
It’s time for me to take that long winter’s nap (well, there’s a busy Monday of football first). Enjoy Christmas, Hanukkah, the holiday tournaments, the bowls and football playoffs. I’m sure national affairs will be no less crazy after Three Kings.
There was a time when most of us neither knew nor cared about matters to do with transgender, save in the nature of not quite being able to look away from the blessedly infrequent spectacle of someone in the public eye deciding to medically readjust their body to the appearance of the opposite sex and to change their name to conform. Christine Jorgenson was, as I recall as a teenager, seen as a freakish anomaly – an entertaining one, to be sure, but pretty much a one-off. Travel writer Jan Morris (formerly James) and musician Wendy (formerly Walter) Carlos came along a decade or two later. Their transition to a sex other than the one they had been born with at a point where both were mature adults was viewed as kind of a private eccentricity, not affecting much beyond their families and personal circle. Curious, but … whatever floats your boat. I also suspect that there was a scattering of other individuals who made such a transition, and chose to live quietly and modestly in their new identity; happy enough to live and be accepted in the identity that they felt was truly a reflection of who they were. Constantly blaring out the specifics of their previous life and their new one was most definitely not a means to achieving privacy.
Yes, the time of the season has arrived again, although seeing all the pumpkin spice scented and flavored seasonal stuff on the shelves of various retail outlets should have provided what is popularly known as “a clue.” (Along with all the autumn leaf and scarecrow and harvest décor things…)
Yes, Thanksgiving, followed closely by Christmas, featuring a centerpiece dish of what I used to call Eternal Turkey, Strong to Save. Thanksgiving when I was living at a home with my parents and sibs, meant a ginormous turkey on both holidays, followed by my mother’s schedule of dishes incorporating the leftovers thereof: plain old warmed up leftovers initially, followed by hot turkey sandwiches, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey a la king, turkey croquettes, turkey and noodle casserole … and when the carcass was stripped to bones, into the pot for broth and another two weeks of turkey stew/soup.